The return to Eclipse Hollow was quiet.
No horns.
No banners.
No thrones awaiting.
Just wolves with dirt on their faces and steel in their eyes.
They didn't cheer when Elara rode in.
They didn't kneel when Caelina passed.
They simply nodded.
And that was enough.
"A tree is not judged by how high it grows, but by how deep it stands after the storm."
The hollow had changed.
The ash from the attack had not been swept away.
Instead, the smiths of House Iriko used it to forge iron flecks into ceremonial blades — not for war, but for rebuilding.
Walls were patched with scorched stone.
Ruined pavilions were replaced by communal fire-circles.
Every scar in the land became a marker of survival.
Every brick laid, every bone buried, said one thing:
We are still here.
Elara rose at dawn and trained by dusk.
She refused a formal seat, instead holding council under the shadow of the oldest tree in the Hollow — a massive baobab known as The Listening Root.
Those who came to her didn't bow.
They brought plans.
Ideas.
Wood.
Willing hands.
The Iron Coast sent artisans.
The Eastern clans sent herbs, tools, and engineers.
The Moonless Seers offered their prophecies, but not all were easy to hear.
"The blood that rebuilds," said one, "must do so with fingers still burning."
Caelina didn't return to the palace.
She took residence in the old wolf towers of the outer valley — where halfbloods, orphans, and unaligned young shifters had lived before being abandoned by the old regime.
She rebuilt it herself.
Stone by stone.
Refusing aid.
Not because of pride—but because she needed to remember what weight felt like.
One night, Zela found her carving wolf symbols into a new gate beam.
"You know we could summon six masons to do this in an hour."
"I know," Caelina said, sweat streaking her back. "But I need to know what my hands are capable of. Not just my blood."
Zela handed her a cup of fireleaf brew. "You're beginning to sound like Elara."
Caelina smirked. "Good. That means I'm surviving."
In the northern quadrant, young wolves trained again.
Not for battle.
For rescue. For patrol. For stewardship.
The Moon Guard was reborn, not as assassins—but as defenders of the fragile peace.
Sango led them, his methods harsh but fair.
He trained them not to kill.
He trained them to endure.
One day, an elder from the Ironroot Clan approached Caelina.
He bowed low, then lifted a cloth bundle.
"I carved this from one of the spears meant to kill you," he said.
Inside: a pendant of twisted iron and bone, shaped like a rising wolf and a falling crown.
"It's not a symbol of rule," he said. "It's a symbol of remembering."
Caelina held it in her palm.
The weight felt right.
Not heavy.
Earned.
That night, around the forge-fires, Elara gave a quiet speech.
She didn't plan it.
She just stood up, soot on her cheek, and spoke:
"We were meant to be wiped out.
But we weren't.
Because we are not bark and leaves.
We are root.
We grow beneath the earth until the sky is ready again.
And now—
we build with what tried to break us."
As she stepped down, she found Caelina watching her from the back, arms folded.
"You always sound like thunder wrapped in poetry," Caelina teased.
"You always sound like storm held at bay."
They smiled.
And for the first time since the summit—
Laughed.
Not out of mockery.
Out of relief.